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About Me

All:
I have finally found the right community to share my latest project: Designing and Building an Audiophile grade Music Server. This is my first post on Computer Audiophile so I will give a brief introduction of myself and my audio equipment:
I was in Information Technology/Computer Science for most of my working career, and about 4 years ago switched over to Research Science. I have since been published as a co-author on a paper in the field of Neuroscience, but my main specialty is Computational Finance. I also have a strong background in Electrical Engineering I learned at the University of Pittsburgh. It is with my Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and appreciation of music that I hope to add value here to this forum as well as learn a lot from other people sharing this interest in computer audio.
My audio system consists of:
Integrated Amplifier: Creek Evolution 50A
Digital Front End: Custom Designed Linux Music Server
Digital Front End: NAD 516 CD Player
SPDIF Converter: USB to COAX M2TECH HiFACE TWO
DAC: Bryston BDA-1
Speakers: Epos Epic 2 with Epos stands
Cabling & Interconnects: AudioQuest mid-range for speaker cables and XLR from DAC to Integrated, OEM or "generic" power cables and other interconnects.
I very recently sold off my analogue front end as I found my new Linux server to exceed it sonically. It consisted of a Rega P1 turntable with Ortofon Red 2M cartridge, and a Vincent PHO-8 Phono Stage.
As for the main reason I joined this forum........ I originally posted this thread on Stereophile, but now will re-post here as I think this is a much better forum for this topic.... please reference the thread below...
I hope my experiences will help a few and I also hope to learn a lot here as well!
Respectfully,
Ron

Hi
I'm playing around with the idea to use a Single Computer Board (SCB) as a music streamer rather than a full blown PC. I have two questions regarding that.
1) How do these devices (Odroid and Raspberry Pi2) compare to a full blown PC? Are they better soundwise? Worse? The same? Different? Did anyone ever measure or compare the two?
2) I'm thinking of building the following device:
Odroid or Raspberry Pi2 board (good following, broad support, the Odroid is slightly more expensive and has higher energy consumption but is more powerful)
Linear power supply. At the moment I am thinking a small Teddy Pardo as the maximum I'd need is 20 watts.
SOtM tX-USBhub with a linear power supply, connected to the SBC through a Male A to Male B USB connector.
Good USB cable (Chord Sarum)
Uptone Audio Regen
DAC
Music source is a Synology NAS connected over home network (Cat7 cable, two switches and powerlines).
Running on Raspbian/MPD or Volumio or something along those lines
I want to play CD quality and hi-res on it. No upsampling or format conversion.
Anything I would need to look out for?
Yours
Arie

Hello,
Just bought the Chord Mojo and having some problems with playback (DOP) of DSD files. There are intermittent, short stops in playback, not really at fixed intervals. The computer used is pretty powerful (FX6300 six-core, 16gigs memory, DSD library on SSD), so I don't think it's the system. It's running Apricity OS (an Arch based distro). Nothing I tried so far helps. I tried most settings in JRiver, memory playback turned off/on, smaller prebuffering/bigger prebuffering. I also removed the pulseaudio server, but also with no effect.
Any thoughts?
Regards,
Angelo

Simple explanation for this. Aurender didn't make their own player. They are using MPD and trying to pass it as their ownership, which it's definitely not, and doing so without even mentioning MPD or the GPL license on their homepage or anywhere in the firmware.
A while ago a developer made a separate fork of MPD with an Upnp plugin for MPD, (which eventually made it into MPD master). The way the Upnp plugin worked within the contraints of the MPD API was to use the "browse" feature of a MPD client to, well browse, the directoy structure of an Upnp server. Aurender forked this Upnp-fork of MPD, and my guess is that they modified the Upnp code to browse network shares instead of Upnp servers. Since MPD (and subsequently Aurender) does not read tags while playing, but only when scanning files, it makes sense that Aurender threw something of a hack (yes, that would be AMM) together to somehow support metadata when using the NAS feature.
Those who are a little familiar with MPD or Linux might wonder why Aurender simply didn't just mount the network share from NAS and symlink to it from the music directory, and at the same sidestep the need for AMM. The answer to that is: I am not sure, maybe because symlinking still requires a rescan of the music directory for MPD to pickup the symlink. It would be rather illogical if the customer added a NAS share, but was told that they need to wait for rescan of all their music, including the new music on the added NAS, before they could even manually browse the NAS. It could potentially take many many hours just to add a NAS. Also, to rely on the OS mounting the network share could have unforeseen consequences. As an Aurender is meant to be an "applience", it *could* make sense to let the player handle the network shares itself, which points back to a rewrite of the MPD Upnp plugin to support network shares.
As a consequence, this requires the use of AMM running on a MAC or PC, for the metadata to show when playing songs from a NAS.
Proof: https://github.com/aurender/mpd-upnp
And I believe they even licensed the mPad app. (mPad has since been improved, and using the iOS7 look, while the Aurender app is still an iOS4/iOS5/iOS6 app). How weird is that Aurender gets pretty much universal praise for their app, whereas ..say Bryston sometimes are criticised for relying on mPad. (which in it's current form is a better looking, with better usability than the forked Aurender app).
Btw using a Samba/NFS share directly as music directory in user space is now a feature of mainline MPD, so I would recommend Aurender to once again refork MPD. MPD does not support multi "music directories" yet (and I think there's already a request for this feature), but that feature would be trivial to implement. Then Aurender music library could support both internal storage and NAS at the same time, and have the possibility to rescan both music directories regardless of one another. That would get rid of AMM once and for all. Then again, that might be what they already planning to do..
But please take a lesson from Bryston and give credit where due, and don't try to blatantly steal open source software. I know you don't want to hand out the source code of your players, and that is the reason you try to hide the origin of your players software. After all, the W20 costs 17000$+ USD, so it's fully "understandable" that you don't want this associated with a small open source project. But as much as you want to, the Aurender playback software ownership does not belong to you, and you are required by the GPL License to hand out the source code by your customers request.

EasyTag has added support for dsf files. This is part of the development branch and so far it has been pretty stable.
Linux users, please have a crack at this:
EasyTag home page - https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG
EasyTag (with dsf support) git page - https://git.gnome.org/browse/easytag/log/?h=wip/dsf-support'>https://git.gnome.org/browse/easytag/log/?h=wip/dsf-support
EasyTag git page - https://git.gnome.org/browse/easytag/
This if for users who can compile their own version and have some experience with git and make tools. Found a bug?
File a new bug in Bugzilla (you will need to register for an account if you do not have one) or send an email describing the bug to the mailing list.

Hi,
I'm a Linux nerd, new to CA and just getting my Audiophile feet wet. I have a project in mind and could use some pointers, I have many questions.
I've gone thru the FAQ. What I'd like to know is, do people have strong opinions on the following? I'm looking for an ideal setup.
Options for a PC platform in a DIY solution:
Raspberry Pi B+ (w/Raspbian OS) and the I2S-based HiFiBerry DAC+ (RCA version)
Intel NUC and *some Linux audio OS and **some DAC
BeagleBone Black and **some DAC
I like the RPi version b/c the RPi is:
ubiquitous
cheap
reliable
familiar to me (i have several)
*Linux Audio-ish OSs
AudioPhile Linux
Daphile (x86_32/64 only)
VortexBox (Fedora-based)
any experience w/these OSs? Here, I would lean towards VortexBox only b/c I'm used to RH products.
** I'm at a loss as to which DAC to use
Or do I go for a COTS/turnkey solution?
For all-in-one solutions:
VortexBox Appliance
Totaldac d1-server (yeah, right...cha-ching!)
SOtM sMS-100
The DIY is more attractive to me b/c I foresee much customization in the future. E.g., being able to autorip CDs when you insert them would be nice. Uploading media from hand-held devices would also be good. I imagine lots of 3rd party plug-ins would come into play, too. However, if there is a COTS product out there that fits the bill, then I'd be interested in looking at it.
Also, for the audio power amplifier...any suggestions? Anything wrong with the Pyle PTA1000 1000W Professional Power Amplifier?
Also, should I care a *lot* about S/PDIF vs AES/EBU?
Another question: if I'm using a DAC, will I not be taking proper advantage of it if most of my music files are lossy (low bit rate MP3s)?
One other thing to mention, this setup would not require cloud/internet radio connectivity.
Again, I want decent SQ, nothing insane.

Hello
I have more a few 100s of CD's waiting to be ripped since many years because I'm too lazy to do it one by one manually.
I am thinking if I could get a 5 CD changer tray, load it in the morning and get EAC to rotate through each and rip that would solve my problem. I could just come back home to swap the next 5 set of CDs and move on with my life. Other option is wait for humanoid Robots to become a reality. I run EAC on wine in Ubuntu.
Is there such an external usb multi-CD reader available?
How does one automate rotation in the shell? What linux command does one give to the device for that.
Anyone successfully got EAC to rotate like this? Please share your experiences.
Thanks
G0bble

Does anyone experience with this player of Finnish origine. (All the processing wil be on the fly, so the PC/Mac have to deliver a -much- more CPU load than a 'normal' player)
Before I dive into the quite complicated set-up, I wonder if anyone has meaningfull results?
With regards, Maerten

Since my old Rega CD Player died, I decided to switch off CD rom and move to software.
I did this step in the past for the video\movies, now it is time for the music.
I listen almost to classic music and expecially chamber music.
I tried several solutions and still not found the best one, for example:
- Windows desktop + JRiver
- Windows touch + JRiver
- Windows + Foobar
- JPlay in different environment
- Linux + MPD
- etc....
Every solution tried anyway is based on a NAS storing music files and a USB DAC.
I must admit that I wish "something" that does not force me to use kayboard and mouse to listen to music.
I must admit that Jriver running on a Windows tiouchscreen tablet in theatre view is LOVELY.
Ubuntu Linux + MPD is a good idea, but is not so flexible like JRiver
and so on...
Both MPD and JRiver, correctly configured and tuned, are very nice but...
from your experience, are there real advanteges running Ubuntu+MPD over Win+Jriver and\or Foobar , from a sound quality point of view ?
Regards.

After some weeks of intensive work, I have uploaded a Linux USB2 driver for the Mytek.
It's based on the USB2 driver for the Terratec 6Fire currently available in the kernel. I have adapted it to work with the Mytek.
With thanks to Jesus from Sonore for getting some documentation.
You'll have to compile the driver yourself, instructions can be found in the INSTALL, FIRMWARE, ISSUES and README.md files.
my github repo
Let me know how it works!

Hello!
Yesterday after I tried Jplay the first time, It shocked me how much the sound improved over my regular player foo2k, but It's extremely inconvenient and I wouldn't exactly call it stable, or cheap. After reading through the documentation I thought I could play like that with foobar too using fooramdisk combined with fidelizer, needless to say it still didn't sound anything like Jplay, so what I learned that putting the audio files into a ram-disk doesn't really change anything and the problem lies within Windows itself. After some thought to it I decided I would try playback on Linux, having a hiface2 usb converter doesn't make life easy for me, but that's not really relevant, I'll make it work somehow. My question is, what's the best Linux distribution for audiophile music playback. (I have flac files) Does Linux have what it takes to overcame Windows in this aspect, is it a better solution then paying the price for a Mac? I used the forum search and found no similar threads, so here I go :-)